About

David Jablonski is a Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Geophysical Sciences. His research focuses on macroevolution, paleobiology, and evolutionary paleoecology, with a particular emphasis on marine invertebrates. Jablonski's work explores the patterns and processes that have shaped biodiversity over geological time, including the impact of mass extinctions and the origins of modern marine biota. He has contributed significantly to understanding the latitudinal diversity gradient, the dynamics of marine faunas, and the fossil record's role in macroevolutionary studies. His research integrates paleontological data with biogeography and evolutionary theory, advancing knowledge of how environmental and biological factors influence biodiversity patterns across spatial and temporal scales.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Paleontology
• Ecology
• Evolutionary biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Alternative pathways into the deep sea: patterns in Bivalvia

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2026-02-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Relatively few clades have colonized the deep sea. Here, we analyse evolutionary pathways into this harsh environment, as a continuum defined by two potential endmembers-a 'piecemeal model', with exclusively deep-sea species (deep-sea endemics herein) derived from multiple, independent entries and an 'in situ diversification model' with one entry followed by species proliferation. We focus first on two ancient, distantly related subclades in Class Bivalvia, Mytilidae and Lucinidae, each with hundreds of species occurring globally from the intertidal to abyssal plains. Placing bathymetric ranges into newly inferred molecular phylogenies, we find that the deep-sea endemics within Lucinidae derive in piecemeal fashion, estimating up to 16 phylogenetically isolated entries and perhaps one modest in situ diversification. Mytilidae entered the deep sea just four times, with most endemics stemming from the prolific in situ diversification of Bathymodiolinae. We suggest that the contrasting phylogenetic patterns of entry and proliferation in these clades may be determined by differences in ancestral adult feeding modes. Across Bivalvia, we find that under half of extant families have deep-sea endemics, with the piecemeal model occurring more frequently. Taken together with other clades, we suggest that evolutionary pathways to deep-sea endemicity are more often shaped by multiple, independent events than by in situ diversification.

  PublisherDOI

• Interplay of Body Size and Functional Ecology: Overlap and Divergence in Bivalvia

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2025-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Latitudinal Trends in Morphological Complexity: Gradients, Filters, and Discordance with Species Richness

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2025-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Mass extinctions and their rebounds: a macroevolutionary framework

  Paleobiology · 2025-01-21 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Mass extinctions are natural experiments on the short- and long-term consequences of pushing biotas past breaking points, often with lasting effects on the structure and function of biodiversity. General properties of mass extinctions—exceptionally severe, taxonomically broad, global losses of taxa—are starting to come into focus through comparisons among dimensions of biodiversity, including morphological, functional, and phylogenetic diversity. Notably, functional diversity tends to persist despite severe losses of taxonomic diversity, whereas taxic and morphological losses may or may not be coupled. One of the biggest challenges in synthesizing and extracting general consequences of these events has been that they are often driven by multiple, interacting pressures, and the taxa and their traits vary among events, making it difficult to link single stressors to specific traits. Ongoing improvements in the taxonomic and stratigraphic resolution of these events for multiple clades will sharpen tests for selectivity and help to isolate hitchhiking effects, whereby organismal traits are carried by differential survival or extinction of taxa owing to other organismal or higher-level attributes, such as geographic-range size. Direct comparative analyses across multiple extinction events will also clarify the impacts of particular drivers on taxa, functional traits, and morphologies. It is not just the extinction filter that deserves attention, as the longer-term impact of extinctions derives in part from their ensuing rebounds. More work is needed to uncover the biotic and abiotic circumstances that spur some clades into re-diversification while relegating others to marginal shares of biodiversity. Combined insights from mass extinction filters and their rebounds bring a macroevolutionary view to approaching the biodiversity crisis in the Anthropocene, helping to pinpoint the clades, functional groups, and morphologies most vulnerable to extinction and failed rebounds.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The end-Cretaceous mass extinction restructured functional diversity but failed to configure the modern marine biota

  Science Advances · 2025-05-21 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The end-Cretaceous (K-Pg) mass extinction shows how large-scale taxonomic loss affects functional diversity over short and long timeframes. In a macroevolutionary model system, we find that, despite losing ~60% of genera and ~20% of family-level diversity, marine bivalves lost only ~5% of their functional diversity, inconsistent with random extinction. Even with evolutionary opportunities presented by a disrupted ecosystem, low-diversity groups prior to the extinction or those originating in the Cenozoic rarely reach higher ranks today, implying long-term diversity ceilings to certain ecological roles. Clades that survived the extinction tend to dominate functions today, 66 million years post-extinction, but both relative richness and phylogenetic structure of those functional groups have been significantly shuffled. Thus, neither the composition of the pre-extinction biota nor the set of taxa that survived the extinction fully accounts for the functional and phylogenetic structure of today's biota. The extinction disrupted Mesozoic biodiversity but did not fully determine the present-day configuration.

  PublisherDOI

• Expanding Hepatitis C Virus Treatment in the New Mexico State Prison System: Using the ECHO Model for Provider and Prison Peer Education

  Journal of Viral Hepatitis · 2024-08-13 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  It is critical to address hepatitis C virus (HCV) in carceral settings to achieve worldwide elimination of the virus. We describe New Mexico's (NM) experience expanding HCV treatment in state prisons, supplemented with Project ECHO (ECHO; virtual mentorship through guided practice) and the NM Peer Education Program (NMPEP). We describe how using these programs may be a model for expanding treatment in prisons globally. ECHO, NM Corrections Department (NMCD) and Wexford Health Services (WHS) collaborate to treat HCV in state prisons and increase HCV knowledge among incarcerated persons using NMPEP. Each person arriving in prison is tested for HCV and those with active infection receive baseline labs, which are reviewed. Patients not meeting criteria for simplified treatment are presented to ECHO for expert guidance. Otherwise, patients are treated by WHS without consultation. NMPEP provides patient-to-patient education in prisons, addressing HCV myths and exploring treatment refusals. From December 2020 to June 2023, 3603 people had HCV viremia. In this study, 1685 people started treatment: 1280 were treated using the simplified algorithm and 405 were presented to ECHO. Of the 988 people who completed treatment and had sustained virologic response (SVR) labs drawn, 89.2% achieved SVR (i.e., cure). Most of the 107 people who did not achieve SVR had presumed reinfection. NMPEP trained 148 peer educators who educated 3832 peers about HCV prevention and treatment. HCV treatment in prisons can be expanded by implementing simplified treatment algorithms, use of the ECHO model for patients with advanced disease and peer education.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Key Adaptive Trait Promotes Contrasting Modes of Diversification in a Bivalve Clade

  Evolutionary Biology · 2024-11-28 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Siphons in bivalves have been postulated as a key adaptive trait, enabling modes of life inaccessible to asiphonate lineages, that afford better protection from predation and dislodgement, thereby enhancing their taxonomic diversification. To test the impact of siphons on diversity, we compared two bivalve clades with similar shell forms and life positions that differ in the presence/absence of this supposed key trait: the asiphonate Archiheterodonta (origin ~ 420 Myr ago) and the siphonate Veneridae (origin ~ 170 Myr ago). We measured three characters relevant to burrowing (shell length, cross-sectional area, and proportional shell volume) in these two groups, finding that siphonate venerids occupy more modes of life than archiheterodonts because they can live at a greater range of distances from the sediment-water interface, with the thinnest shells occurring in the deepest-burrowing groups. Asiphonate taxa have thicker shells, perhaps as a compensatory adaptation in response to the potential for exposure and attack because they are limited to shallower depths of burial. The lack of siphons may have impeded morphologic and taxonomic diversification in archiheterodonts. In contrast, siphons are consistent with a key adaptive trait in the Veneridae, evidently enabling taxonomic diversification into a greater range of morphologies. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11692-024-09643-6.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Testing for allocation strategies and evolutionary tradeoffs in the bivalve shell

  Journal of Molluscan Studies · 2024-09-23 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Tradeoffs are a fundamental aspect of evolution, such that organismal morphologies often reflect a combination of developmental constraints and functional requirements. The net result is a striking variety of allocation strategies—where and how resources are shunted into aspects of the body plan to meet these competing demands. The bivalve shell records aspects of the animal's allocation strategies as the relative investment in the carbonate valves and the internal soft parts, generally reflected by the volume of the internal cavity. The carbonate volume can be further partitioned among different components of the shell, including the sculptural elements thought to evolve partly under ecological controls. Assuming there are general limits to energy acquisition, bivalve individuals may show different allocations between the volumes of the inner cavity and shell, and possibly for the sculpture. Using 3D scans of 385 valves representing 339 extant marine species occurring in the Florida Keys, USA, we find a variety of allocation strategies but that tradeoffs in shell construction are uncommon. Instead, species with relatively high allocations to their shell thickness also have prominent sculpture, suggesting a structural relationship. Neither outer shell mineralogy nor microstructure appears to partition the tradeoff space, suggesting varied pathways to the fabrication of both convergent and divergent shell forms. Framing new morphological and physiological analyses of bivalves by allocation strategies recorded in their well-fossilized shells opens new opportunities for understanding an under-studied, macroevolutionary dynamic: how tradeoffs have shaped the class's 500 million-year evolutionary and ecological history.

  PublisherDOI

• Ecological structure of diversity-dependent diversification in Phanerozoic marine bivalves

  Biology Letters · 2024 · 19 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Biology
  • Ecology
  • Paleontology

  Rigorous analysis of diversity-dependence-the hypothesis that the rate of proliferation of new species is inversely related to standing diversity-requires consideration of the ecology of the organisms in question. Differences between infaunal marine bivalves (living entirely within the sediment) and epifaunal forms (living partially or completely above the sediment-water interface) predict that these major ecological groups should have different diversity dynamics: epifaunal species may compete more intensely for space and be more susceptible to predation and physical disturbance. By comparing detrended standing diversity with rates of diversification, origination, and extinction in this exceptional fossil record, we find that epifaunal bivalves experienced significant, negative diversity-dependence in origination and net diversification, whereas infaunal forms show little appreciable relationship between diversity and evolutionary rates. This macroevolutionary contrast is robust to the time span over which dynamics are analysed, whether mass-extinction rebounds are included in the analysis, the treatment of stratigraphic ranges that are not maximally resolved, and the details of detrending. We also find that diversity-dependence persists over hundreds of millions of years, even though diversity itself rises nearly exponentially, belying the notion that diversity-dependence must imply equilibrial diversity dynamics.

  PublisherDOI

• SHUFFLING DIVERSITY, FORM, AND FUNCTION: PERSISTENCE BUT RESTRUCTURING OF BIVALVE FUNCTIONAL GROUPS AND THEIR MORPHOLOGICAL DISPARITY BETWEEN THE END-CRETACEOUS EXTINCTION AND PRESENT-DAY

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Late Cenozoic dynamics of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient: Regional extinction, range expansion, and biological attributes

  NSF · $402k · 2016–2023

• Collaborative Research: Bivalves in time and space: testing the accuracy of methods to reconstruct ancestral morphology, dates, geography, and diversification patterns

  NSF · $237k · 2009–2014

• DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Integrating Fossils and Molecules to Trace Ecological Divergence and Convergence in Marine Bivalves

  NSF · $11k · 2015–2018

• Analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of marine bivalve evolution: Combining molecular and densely-sampled fossil data

  NSF · $283k · 2021–2026

• Collaborative Research: The dynamics of geographic ranges: Origin and maintenance of marine diversity gradients

  NSF · $270k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Peter M. Sheehan

  University of East Anglia

  654 shared

• Michael R. Sandy

  University of Dayton

  651 shared

• Daniel B. Blake

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  651 shared

• Donald R. Prothero

  651 shared

• Arnold Miller Cincinnati

  United States Geological Survey

  651 shared

• Steven M. Stanley

  651 shared

• Donald P. Lawrence

  651 shared

• June R. P. Ross

  651 shared

Labs

• David Jablonski LabPI